My Uncle Told Me a Story

I reckon I was about twelve or thirteen when my uncle told me this story, and it's something that stuck with me all these years. You see, he used to take me fishing down by the river on Sunday evenings. He never would tell me that we were going to go until about two or three hours after lunch. Then he'd tell me, "Get the shovel. The worms ain't gonna dig themselves."

I'd get an old can and the shovel and we'd go out to the hog lot or to the pile of hay behind the barn and dig a bunch of big, fat worms for bait. Then he'd get the fishing rods and fire up his old tractor. I'd sit up on that big rusted, red fender and hold the rods and worms and listen to the old tractor chug as he drove us down to the river. I used to really like to sit up there and just watch that big wheel go round as he drove. I was just a boy then, and I thought life couldn't get any better than that.

Anyways, we'd get off the tractor and make our way down to the river bank. We'd cut us some forked sticks and poke them in mud along the river bank. Then we'd bait up, cast out our lines and set the poles on the forked sticks until we got a bite. My uncle would then reach into the back pocket of his worn jeans and take out his pouch of tobacco. He would take a big chew before sitting down, with his big rough hands on his knees. Every so often he'd bend forward to check his line or send a stream of coffee-colored spit into the river.

Sometimes we'd just set there and not say a word to each other for an hour or more. Other times we'd talk about things that needed doing around the farm or how the cows were doing. We'd talk about the big buck deer that always seemed to disappear around hunting season. Sometimes he'd tell me a story. He'd always start out with, "Did I ever tell you about -" and I'd tell him no, and he'd tell his tale while we sat there in the fading light and listened to the river move on by.

This one started out with, "Did I ever tell ya about what happened with old Silas Macky?" Of course, I told him he hadn't. That's the story I'm going to tell you now.

You know these mountains are old. They say they are the oldest in the country and we ain't the first folks to live here. You've seen all the arrowheads and Indian stuff we find when we are plowing, so you know the Indians lived here a long time before we did. The Indians said that there were folks living here when they first arrived. Some of the folks the Indians saw were tall like giants, but a few were little, tiny folks. Everybody always used to think that was just fool Indian tales, but then one day Charlie McGee's grandpa was digging a well and he hit a big slab of rock. When he got it all dug out he saw it was the lid to a big stone box. That rock had been worked and polished as smooth as anything you ever saw, and turned out that it was a coffin. It took him and his two brothers to raise the lid up. Inside was a skeleton that was eight foot long, but the whole thing crumbled to dust when they tried to take it out. He showed off the coffin though and used it as part of the foundation for his barn. You can still see it if you go over there. Anyway, after that folks thought there might be something to those old Indian stories.

The Indians said that all the big folks and the little folks either left or died off after they got here. I reckon if you were to look in the right spot you could probably still find things from them, like that coffin old Charlie McGee's grandpa found years ago. They say these mountains are more hollow than solid. You know all the caves around here, and how we‚ve filled up most the openings on our land to keep the cows, or little boys, from falling in them. Well, the Indians used to say that there were some more folks that were here when they got here. These folks didn't leave nor die out. The Indians said that was because they were magic and lived in a place down in the caves, under the mountains.

Getting back to Silas, he lost his family one spring, back before all of this started. The river was high and fast that spring because of melting snow and spring rain. His wife and boy tried to cross the ford on horseback on their way back from a trip to town. Silas had told them not to go, but you know how people can be when they get something in their heads. They made it across the first time with no trouble. But the river had gotten even bigger while they were in town, and the horse lost its footing on the rocks. Horse, wife and son were all swept down stream and washed up dead about ten miles down the river. Silas took to drinking after that and seemed to live in a world of sadness.

After a year or so, Silas would talk to my uncle about how sometimes he'd wake up at night and hear beautiful music coming from his field. One time he said he saw lights moving on the hillside when he looked out one night. He said he went running out there with his shotgun thinking he had somebody spotlighting deer. But he said when he got there he saw these people just walking along the hillside. Silas said they were dressed funny and all of them were real nice-looking. He claimed he hollered at them and they just vanished. Of course, we all said that Silas had just gotten so drunk that he'd taken to hearing and seeing things.

But then the boy showed up.

Silas said he was plowing his back field one day and when he turned around he saw the boy standing at the edge of the field. The boy was tall, thin and pale, with blue eyes and blonde hair. He said the boy was blinking in the sunlight and rubbing his eyes. Silas told my uncle how the boy was dressed all funny when he first found him. He said even the mail-order catalog didn't have clothes like the boy was wearing.

Now Silas may have been a drunk, but he was a good man. He took the boy back to his house and tried to find out where he belonged. Turned out the boy either couldn't or wouldn't say a word. He acted all afraid and just kept looking at everything like it was the first time he'd seen a house, or a tractor, or anything normal. Silas put him in some of his son's old clothes and tried to feed him up a little. That was another odd thing about the boy: he wouldn't touch a bite of meat but he'd eat raw vegetables all day long.

So Silas loaded him up on the tractor and went around to all the farms trying to find out who lost him, but nobody had ever seen the boy before. He took him into town and to see if anybody had heard of a lost boy, but he didn't have no luck there either. So he left word that if anybody turned up looking for a boy to send them his way.

Silas took the boy back to his farm and more or less adopted him, though he never did send him to school. Silas thought the boy was a little too strange for school and was afraid the other kids would pick on him. Besides, they weren't as strict about school in those days, and I think Silas wanted the help around the farm. Silas started calling the boy Ed. At first, it was like Ed could speak but he just didn't know how to talk our language. When he'd get worked up he'd sometimes babble away and nobody could make sense out of what he was saying. But after about a year or so it got to where Ed had learned enough to talk to as good as anyone. Ed turned out to be pretty good around the farm. There wasn't anybody around that could tend to a sick cow like that boy and he could grow the biggest crops you ever saw. Silas had a devil of a time keeping him away from the caves though. If he didn‚t watch that boy would wander right off and into any cave he could find. Silas would fill up all the entrances he could find and the boy would cry and wail whenever Silas would plug one up. Silas tried to tell him they were dangerous places and he was doing it so wouldn't get hurt, but the boy would just cry all the more.

That went on all the time that Ed was learning to speak our language. Then Ed finally told Silas why he kept messing with the caves; he said it was because he used to live down in one. He said there were a whole slew of people that lived down there, under the mountain. Ed claimed he'd gone off exploring on his own one day and found a long winding passage. He said he'd crawled and climbed and somehow found himself standing there where Silas found him. The boy told Silas he liked him but he knew his momma missed him and wanted to see him. He just didn't know how to get back to her. Ed told Silas he'd kept it a secret all that time because his people usually kept to themselves and he was afraid that they would be mad at him if he told.

Ed claimed to be over a hundred even though he only looked about twelve. He said time passed different down there, and that it was like another world. Ed said his people were very old. He said they were there when the first folks came to the area, and that they'd still be there when the last folks are gone.

Silas thought it was all foolishness, but he wanted to make the boy happy. Together they hatched a plan. The boy had been playing Silas' old guitar for a bit, even though he used different chords and his music didn't sound like anything you ever heard. But Ed could make pretty music with that old guitar, so Silas told him to play at night and maybe his people would hear him and come back.

So the boy started to play every night - but nothing happened for about a month. Then one night some other music started playing out in the field while the boy plucked the old guitar. Ed jumped up and ran outside, still playing that guitar hung around his neck, and Silas followed him out. They made their way to the field where Silas first found him. Silas told my uncle he saw the boy's momma that night, and that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Silas thought it would be good for Ed to have a friend close his own age to hang around with. My uncle was about seventeen then, and he used to go over to Silas' farm every so often to visit and talk. Like most boys, Ed loved his momma; but Silas had been good to him and he loved Silas too. My uncle said he didn't know what to think about this, but every so often he'd go over there and Ed would be gone. Silas would explain that Ed was with his momma. Then my uncle would go back the next week and Ed would be there.

Pretty soon Silas started to spruce himself up a bit and he quit drinking. Then, one day, my uncle went there and they both were gone. He looked everywhere but couldn't find them. He kept it quiet and went back a few days later and there they were. Ed had him a fine-looking harp that he could play like anything. As for Silas, my uncle said he looked the happiest he'd seen him in ages. Silas told my uncle that he had been courting the boy's momma and he was going to go stay with her under the mountain. My uncle said he told Silas he thought it was a bunch of foolishness. Then Silas showed him a woman's comb made out of pure gold, said it belonged to Ed's momma and that she gave it to him to remember her until he joined her. Silas was happy, said he was gonna have a wife and family again. Silas said it was real pretty under the mountain and he didn't reckon he'd ever want to leave once he got there, and that was probably the last time anyone would see him again.

Since my uncle knew his secret, Silas wrote out a will right there. The will said that if anything ever happened to Silas and Ed that he was turning his farm over to my uncle on the condition that it always stay in the family and we leave a few caves open. Silas thought it would safer for those folks under the mountain if everybody thought he was dead and he wanted to leave his farm with someone that knew his secret.

Well, that's how we came by the old Macky place. Sure enough, next time my uncle went over there wasn't a trace of Silas or Ed. My uncle remembered what Silas had told him and let the sheriff know Silas and Ed were missing. Everybody formed a search party, but they couldn't find hide nor hair of them. They even looked through the caves but didn't find anything. My uncle told them what Silas had said and showed them the will. They all reckoned Silas had gone crazy and he and the boy had fallen down some pit in one of those caves looking for these folk under the mountain.

So we got the old Macky place. You know, our family still mostly uses it for crop and pasture land. Well, my uncle took to staying there every so often - just so the house would be lived in. He stayed there off and on for a few months and everything seemed normal. He said he thought maybe old Silas had just gone crazy after all. Then he told me one fall night he was staying there and heard this music out in the pasture. My uncle said he snuck outside to see what was going on. Then he heard a mean old bull we used to have start to bellow and snort. Right then he heard what sounded like a scream and the music stopped. He said the moon was full that night, so he just took off running and saw a girl hung up on the barb wire fence. She was wearing a fancy blue dress that glittered in the moonlight. I guess that old bull started to chase her and she ran head long into that fence. The bull was bearing down her so my uncle said he just ran up, put his arms around her and gave a tug. It ended up ripping her dress up pretty bad but he got her off the fence and away from that bull. I remember my uncle looked way far off when he told me about putting his coat around her and taking her back to the house. He said he tried to talk to her some but he didn't get far. She said Silas and Ed had taught her a few words, and that she was one of those folks that lived under the mountain. My uncle said she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen.

By that time he finished telling me that story it was getting pretty dark and the fireflies was dancing on the river bank. I could have sworn I heard some music playing way soft and floating on the breeze. My uncle said, "I know you been itching to drive that tractor yourself. Why don't you take it on back to the house?" I asked him, "What about you?" He said, "Just tell them I'll be along directly." Before I left he gave me something. It was just a torn bit of some kind of fancy blue cloth, but it glittered like diamonds under the moonlight.

That night was the last time I saw my uncle. We looked of course, but we never did find hide nor hair of him. Everybody said he probably fell in the river and drowned but they never did find his body. I got my bottom tanned the next morning because I didn't get home 'til dawn to tell them he was missing. I told them that I'd fallen asleep on the river bank and when I woke up my uncle was gone. But that ain't exactly the way it happened - 'cause I just drove the tractor out of earshot and then snuck back to see what was going on.

You should have seen the wedding he had with that lady from under the mountain. I was young and didn't know any better. I tried to hide and watch the whole thing, but they found me. I had my first dance that night with a girl in a green dress that glittered like fireflies in the moonlight. We didn't know how to talk to each other much, but I took her hand we and danced a little there on the river bank. She was the prettiest girl I ever saw.

Well boy, it's starting to get dark. I don't reckon we're going to see any deer today. I'll tell you want, I know you've been wanting to drive that four-wheeler so why don't you take it on back to the house? I just want to scout out the top of this ridge a little and I'll be along directly. Wait just a second, I got something for you. It's a little flute made out of some kind of crystal. It's a bit tricky to get used to, but once you get the hang of it it'll sure make you some pretty music.